Protecting carbon-storing forests in the developing world may be easier than mobilizing government bureaucracies; a recent paper finds that local communities, using simple tools like ropes and sticks, can produce forest carbon data on par with results by government employees using high-tech devices.  

Centuries of economic hypotheses have been based on the premise of rational actors: when given a choice between two items, people select the one they value more. But as with many simple premises, this one has a flaw in that it is demonstrably untrue.

Yet that was never really the case. Too many exceptions mean a rule was never a rule anyway - there are lots of examples where people act against their own apparent interests. One of these biases — the mere fact of possessing something raises its value to its owner — is known as the "endowment effect."  

A new paper seeks to address whether this bias is truly universal and speculates that it may have been present in humanity's evolutionary past.

A group including a consultant, a sustainability advocate and an environmental scientist argued today at the Geological Society of America meeting in Denver that while the use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling for "tight oil" is an important contributor to U.S. energy supply, it is not going to result in long-term sustainable production or allow the U.S. to become a net oil exporter.

Having children early and in rapid succession lead to high infant mortality rates in the South Asian countries of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan, according to a paper in
the International Journal of Gynecology&Obstetrics.

1 in 14 births to young mothers in those countries ends with the death of the child within the first year, say researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. 

Experiments on individual photons conducted by physicists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw (FUW) and the Faculty of Applied Physics and Mathematics at the Gdansk University of Technology (PG), have revealed yet another bizarre feature of the quantum world.

When a quantum object is transmitted, its quantum property, whether it behaves as a wave or as a particle, appears to depend on other properties that at first glance have nothing to do with the transmission, they argue.

Click here and sign up to be a participant on ABC’s Shark Tank. You’re probably thinking “what does appearing on a TV show have to do with The Science Play and Research Kit?” Let’s put things into perspective: you’ve designed the perfect science kit, you’ve won the $50,000 prize…then what? If you’re not thinking right now about how to build a sustainable business around your kit, then you’ve probably failed before you began. We’ll take a look at a few business models you may wish to consider. Part 1 of “Science Play and Research Kit: Business Models, Packaging, and Marketing” discusses Open Design.

Open Source Hardware

You might think that health care professionals would become jaded to the plights of people over time - especially in an intensive care ward for burn patients.

Not so, according to a paper which catalogs the emotional and psychological anguish, known as "moral distress," experienced by nurses in an intensive care unit for burn patients.
A burn ICU can be an intense work environment. Many patients suffer significant pain and disfigurement. They may be in the ICU for weeks, and require numerous procedures and surgeries.

Think gender is determined by patriarchal biological concepts like a chromosome? You'll never make it in sociology thinking that way.

Instead, the social sciences are slowly overturning concepts like genital and chromosomes and other science, and it is being replaced by self-identity. The criteria for determining gender now, say Laurel Westbrook, assistant professor of sociology at Grand Valley State, and Kristen Schilt, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, have changed and self-identity is paramount. Only sex-segregated spaces believe that biology determines gender, they conclude.

Even brief usage of anabolic steroids may have long lasting, perhaps even permanent performance-enhancing effects, according to a new study.

It was previously believed that re-acquisition of muscle mass after periods of inactivity was due to motor learning. The new data from an investigation of  the effects of steroids on muscle re-acquisition in mice suggests that there is a cellular 'memory mechanism' within muscle of brief steroid users.

The team investigated the effects of steroids on muscle re-acquisition in mice and discovered greater muscle mass and more myonuclei, which are essential components for muscle fiber function, were apparent after returning to exercise.

Hydraulic fracturing - fracking - is in the headlines a lot these days, and like all issues where science and policy mix, political opinion often outweighs facts.  Natural gas due to fracking has driven CO2 emissions from US energy back to early 1990s levels and emissions from coal back to early 1980s levels, while keeping heat affordable for America's poor.